Tanya Fox, editor, and Brooke Smith, managing editor, are the editorial team behind CardMaker magazine. When not reviewing design submissions and planning future issues of the magazine and pattern books, they can often be found exploring websites for inspiration and visiting their favorite local coffee shop.

They hope you’ll visit the blog often as they share card-making tips, designer features, paper-crafting techniques, project inspiration and a peek at life inside the CardMaker office.

Hi everybody! Kim here from My Kraft Kloset and I’m honored to be a guest designer on the CardMaker blog. This week I’m sharing embellishment tips you can achieve using alcohol-based markers. They aren’t just for coloring paper. You can use any alcohol marker and change many of your embellishments to match your projects. I do this all the time and recommend using only alcohol markers because they are permanent and won’t wash off the embellishments. I used Copic® markers, but you can experiment with whatever brand you have.

I’ve changed buttons, rhinestones, gems, pearls, metal pieces and ribbon. Here I colored a yellow button and changed it to blue with just one marker.

I tend to buy clear pieces or light colors because I know I can change the color to match my projects. This is a great way to save money and will also save on storage space. As shown above, this button used to be clear and now it’s orange.

You can color on metal, too. Here I was deciding which shade of blue I wanted to color the bird charm to match my project.

It only takes a few coats to get the desired color and alcohol markers dry quickly. To avoid color streaking, I recommend letting each coat dry a few seconds before applying the next.

Next, I had some clear rhinestones and ivory pearls I colored with the same blue marker I used on the metal bird charm.

With just a few strokes of the marker you can transform rhinestones and pearls to any color you want.

Here is a close up of how beautiful the blue colored pearls turned out. Only you and I know the secret that they used to be ivory.

Lastly, I put this card together with layers of nautical scraps. Since the bird charm is metal, it is a little heavy, so I secured it to my card with a super sticky adhesive dot.

I hope I’ve inspired you to color your embellishments. Feel free to share photos of your creations with us over on the CardMaker Facebook page. We’d love to hear from you!